Prior to the pandemic, I worked for the UCLA Office of Residential Life as a Program Support Technician for about a year and a half. My job was to provide technical support for events taking place in student housing facilities; you may have seen me and my team around in the black polos, lugging around speakers, lights, and tables for student events.
I recently interviewed five of my old coworkers, all of whom were UCLA undergraduate student workers for the Office of Residential Life (Reslife) before the pandemic, and I still work at the office with two of them. There are only six students in total currently working for our department, down from thirty last year. The majority of our work was based around in-person events, and as the coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible to safely gather large crowds, the department was forced to downsize in a significant way.
In order to help alleviate the sudden lack of work in the beginning of the pandemic, Reslife offered its student workers two options: remote employment through moderating classes on Zoom, or taking an administrative leave package. The total amount of the package was calculated based off a certain average of previously worked hours, but was generally not a large sum. If the worker took the latter option, they would not be allowed to do any remote work with UCLA, like the Zoom moderation. The department emphasized that this payment would be available to everyone until the end of the calendar year, or the school year if you were graduating. We were also led to believe that there would be a wider variety and larger quantity of work available as the pandemic continued.
In July, however, Reslife workers received a sweeping email notifying them that they had been laid-off as a result of the school year ending without any prospect for in-person work. Going into the pandemic, UCLA was forced to lay off a majority of their undergraduate student workers. As a majority of undergraduates have service-oriented jobs that often necessitate in-person elements, this was the logical decision, but one that negatively impacted many students. Because of this, there are very few students still working at the shops or restaurants, but there are still some risking their health through in-person work, though the nature of the jobs have shifted dramatically.
Though I not yet spoken with students at other schools, I am confident this story is similar throughout the whole UC system. Reslife workers had some luck, as several students were given remote Zoom moderator positions. Unfortunately, few students were able to work any shifts beyond the initial remote training, and needed to find employment outside of school for financial stability. Many students had already done so before the start of the pandemic, as the scarcity of shifts has been a recurring story. Even the student leadership at Reslife found themselves boxed out and without any information as well.
While graduate students have easier access to teaching assistant and research positions, undergraduates are often left to fend for themselves, looking for any job that may be accessible and provide financial support. Many undergraduates are not lucky enough to work for the university, especially not in a capacity directly related to their field. Additionally, the teams and departments for undergraduates are often fairly small and isolated, and as a result, there is little sense of interdepartmental camaraderie between UCLA student workers.
One potential organization with the ability to advocate for undergraduate workers is the Undergraduate Student Association (USA.) Their leadership consists a group of 15 elected students that represent all undergraduates at UCLA, and this group is called the Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC.) USAC collect hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in order to fund their commissions and grants for other student groups. One of their most popular commissions is the Campus Events Commission, which regularly puts on incredibly popular events at UCLA like concerts, movie premieres, etc.
I worked with CEC closely on many occasions as they often went through our department to host events on the Hill, which is where the majority of undergraduate students reside during the school year. They were kind and professional, but it’s disheartening that USAC pays so little attention to the people helping put on their most popular events. They have commissioners concerned with transfer students, international students, academic affairs, amongst other general representatives. USAC is a prime candidate to take on the task of organizing the undergraduate labor force at UCLA in such a way to make sure their interests are being represented and considered. A labor representative on USAC may not have had the foresight to warn us that we were going to be laid off soon, but it still seems that an organization that aims to represent undergraduates should seek to protect this one strong intersection of students.
Many undergraduates who work for the university are from marginalized communities; in my department alone, most of our student leadership consisted of women, and the department was a diverse array of ethnicities and majors. Amongst other departments and employers around UCLA, there are plenty of students who get jobs because they need to pay bills ranging from rent, to textbooks, and even to groceries. Though the $15 dollar minimum wage is helpful, we must not grow complacent with a more sustainable part-time income. A good wage is not going to help you if you have been laid off, or if your department is so overstaffed that you cannot get enough hours to begin with.
Now USAC might argue that the resources they provide are available to all students, and as such student workers do not need special recognition. And it is true the Undergraduate Student Association has funds and resources that are available to some students, but most of the money they have available is distributed through grants intended for student groups. The organization even admitted recently that they were expecting thousands of requests for support given to USAC by UCLA through the CARES Act. A representative said that they were only going to be able to give $500 grants to around 10-15% of students, and they wished they could do more. Creating a role whose specific duties are to look out for the best interests of student workers could be incredibly beneficial, and of a significantly lower cost.
It is time to establish a role, regardless of whether it is a team or an individual, in which their sole purpose is to protect the interests of undergraduate workers. This role would probably not even come to fruition in time for me to reap tangible benefits. I do not propose it for my benefit, but for the benefit the future UCLA undergraduate workers who will return to campus. Current first, second, third years, and Bruins-to-be would greatly benefit from UCLA undergraduate workers collectively discussing and organizing presentations about the greatest obstacles they face.
Organizing labor can be difficult – as employers are hesitant to engage with unionization or organization amongst workers. That position could even be filled on a publicly elected, unpaid basis, so as to ensure the individual or individuals performing this task are genuinely motivated to protect student workers, and not just a person being paid to have a job title in a student club. Even though many of our needs are met while working at UCLA, there are always issues that can be addressed through increased communication. Students who need to pay rent and buy groceries deserve consideration in their place of work, because it is different to be a full-time student who is also dependent on their work, as opposed to solely being a student.
I do not know if a union is the right answer, for several reasons. First off, as student it is difficult to find information on how many undergraduate student workers there were before the pandemic, and it is impossible to know how many student workers UCLA will bring back to start staffing for the next school year. We have two main recourses to pursue this action; the first is that we organize only on the UCLA campus, which might not have a large enough undergraduate employee population to justify a formalized union. I’m not even sure all of the students who work at UCLA even work for UCLA, for example students working at the Jamba Juice in Ackerman; is that storefront leased out to somebody else? Or is it directly managed by UCLA?
The second option is to develop a UC-wide system, even though the interests of one campus might not be closely aligned with the needs of students at another. The cost of living in Davis or Merced are markedly different than the cost of living in Berkeley and Los Angeles, and trying to balance those interests could prove complex and detrimental for the students with the most at stake. Before creating a UC-wide undergraduate student union, considerable amounts of work and research need to be done. Again, I’m not saying it is or isn’t the answer, but it is a solution that would take considerable effort to do well, and merits far more research.
Another option is to create a formal student group on the UCLA campus. Since UCLA and USAC don’t have systems in place to represent and protect undergraduate student workers, perhaps the students might take it upon themselves to create a club through Student Organization, Leadership, & Engagement (SOLE.) Using funding that they could request from USAC, perhaps through the Supplemental Fund for Service (SFS) or Student Initiated Outreach Committee (SIOC) fund, and try to petition upon the basis of performing research about the current state of undergraduate student workers.
This is a difficult time to perform such research, as the pandemic has largely shut down many departments that employed students. Still, there are people working in libraries, Ackerman, and on the Hill, and these students are probably very knowledgeable about the nature of their workplace before, during, and after the pandemic. Perhaps since there will probably be little opportunity to work during the 2021 school year, students who were laid off but want to eventually return to work at UCLA could organize to see if there are any common issues or problems the people want addressed. Whether it is a matter of work availability, campus accessibility, work/school/life balance, or a myriad of other complex issues, it is vital that we work together to help unify our response to these common issues.
Organizing would not be the perfect way to protect undergraduate workers, but it is a good start. How can we advocate for ourselves if we cannot even organize amongst ourselves, let alone communicate our concerns to our supervisors or to the university as a whole. Even in my department, where we do regular check-ins with our professional staff supervisors, we were affected by poor communication on a university-wide scale, which led to many of my coworkers losing out on money they were promised with no recourse to collect this payment. Maybe we should have expected to be laid off, but we were at least hoping for enough notice to claim our administrative leave before we were let go. If students want to work at UCLA and take advantage of everything this school has to offer, perhaps they ought to reach out to discuss potential solutions.
Works Cited
https://usac.ucla.edu/about/offices/
Isaac Edejer 